


Caught Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by RadarsTeddyBear



Series: Ducktober 2018 [7]
Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Anxiety, Fictober, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, introspective, prompt: guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-27 23:17:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16229345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RadarsTeddyBear/pseuds/RadarsTeddyBear
Summary: Lena's too anxious to fall asleep.





	Caught Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: ["Guilt"](http://radarsteddybear.tumblr.com/post/169006603389/whumpreads-i-dont-draw-but-ive-been-thinking).

Lena lay in bed, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.  Anxiety gnawed at her stomach, threatening to rise up and spill over.

Today had been...well, it hadn’t been a _bad_ day, per se.  It had been relatively quiet, for living at McDuck Manor.  Mr. McDuck had been at the Money Bin all day, which always made Lena feel a little antsy, but not as much as she did whenever Webby was away.  It was almost like she felt she didn’t belong at the Manor without them there, too, and like someone was going to kick her out or find her super annoying and silently (or maybe not so silently) wish she were gone.  Or something.

She and the other kids had spent a few hours doing school stuff, courtesy of Mrs. Beakley.  Not Lena’s favorite activity, but she could definitely understand why she had to do it (she didn’t really understand why Webby had to do it, though; that kid seemed to know _everything_ ).  After school, Webby had opted to do some independent research about some artifact that she thought Mr. McDuck might be interested in, and Lena had chosen to join her, even though she really couldn’t care less about the artifact or the research.  The triplets had gone off to do their own boy things--Louie was definitely marathoning _Ottoman Empire_ (which Lena still didn’t understand the appeal of), Dewey had disappeared into one of the less-used rooms of the Manor, as he was wont to do (sometimes, Lena could hear loud music and bad singing coming from that direction, but if anybody else noticed, they never said anything), and Huey had helped Webby with her research for a little while before leaving to do more school stuff (which Lena really didn’t understand).

After a while of that, Mrs. Beakley stopped them with a mid-afternoon snack, and then they had a foam dart gun fight around the ground floor of the Manor, which Lena got the feeling was something Mrs. Beakley would rather them _not_ do, but they did anyway.  The game ended when Dewey accidentally hit his uncle in the face with one and Donald had decided that the boys needed to spend some quality time with him fixing up the houseboat, and Webby, naturally, had decided to join.  Which left Lena little choice but to join, too. Which was...awkward, to say the least. Lena didn’t really know what to do, so she’d just ended up standing there chatting with Webby while she hammered wooden boards in place, occasionally lending a hand whenever Webby’d asked.

Then, finally, Mrs. Beakley had called them in for dinner, and by that point, Mr. McDuck was back home, which made Lena feel a little better, but not by much.  She’d stayed mostly quiet while Webby and the boys told him about their day. What was she supposed to say? “I did my school work and then stood around with Webby while she did cool, helpful things, and then I stood around with Webby while she and the boys did other cool, helpful things?”  That wasn’t exactly something you said to a guy who’d gone from penniless to gazillionaire through little more than hard work and was now letting you live in his house rent-free.

Not that Lena deserved to live in his house.  Not after all she’d done. The whole reason she’d even talked to Webby in the first place was to worm her way into the family and do whatever she could to break them apart.  Destroy her friendship with Huey, Dewey, and Louie, pull her away from Mr. McDuck. Ideally, the goal was to get them all to turn on each other, but any little bit of conflict would have been helpful.  Heck, even getting them into trouble would have been helpful. But no, instead she’d risked discovery by using magic to save Mrs. Beakley from being crushed by the train car. Which was definitely a good thing--Lena much preferred a McDuck Manor with Mrs. Beakley to run it, not to mention she was Webby’s grandma--but it still left her with pangs of guilt from time to time for some crazy reason.

And then when that hadn’t worked, Magica had switched to having Lena use her status as Webby’s friend to get close to Mr. McDuck.  Physically. So she could cast curses and try to swipe his Number One Dime. Which, of course, hadn’t worked, either. “Sabotage,” Aunt Magica had called it.  Well, of _course_ Lena hadn’t tried her hardest.  Webby was her friend, and her family was pretty nice.  And rich, to boot.

So why did she still feel so _guilty_ about it?

She’d been doing what she could to keep from hurting them too badly.  And with Aunt Magica breathing down her neck (almost literally), there wasn’t a whole lot she _could_ do.  But somehow, she still felt like she should have done more.

But at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel like she should have listened to Aunt Magica in the first place!  It was the weirdest thing. Sure, after fifteen years of following Aunt Magica’s orders, it made sense that it would feel a little weird not to.  But this? This was _ridiculous_.

And then she’s had that vision, with the magical dream catcher, and it had been absolutely terrifying.  More than enough to set her on the straight and narrow. But before she could change her ways, cut ties with Aunt Magica (well, as much as she could, anyway), she’d possessed her.  And Lena was suddenly powerless to do much of anything.

She could have fought harder.  She could have spent more time practicing and perfecting her own magical abilities so she would have been prepared when Magica had taken over her body.  She could have warned Webby and Mr. McDuck sooner. Sure, it probably would have meant they would have taken her to some remote, barely-reachable corner of the earth and left her there for the rest of forever, but then Duckburg and Scrooge’s dime would have been out of Magica’s reach.  

There had to have been _something_ Lena could have done, but she hadn’t.  It felt like she’d barely even tried.

But now everything was ok.  Lena had a place to live, food to eat every day, new clothes when she needed them.  She even had a family, a _good_ family, made up of people who cared about _her_ , not about stupid vendettas and how she could help them get revenge.

At least, Lena thought they cared about her.  Webby definitely did, that was for sure. Mr. McDuck probably did, though there was still a chance that he’d only let her move in because he’d promised right before Magica had trapped him in his dime.  Mrs. Beakley seemed to like her, but she wasn’t exactly paid to have opinions. Then again, she didn’t usually bother to keep them private. The triplets seemed to be warming up to her, most of the time, though she couldn’t help but feel left out when they started talking about their various inside jokes and secret triplet things than non-triplets could never understand.  Lena wondered if they did that on purpose. Then there was Donald, who Lena was pretty sure didn’t like her very much because he never really said much to her. Then again, that wasn’t entirely a _bad_ thing, since she could never understand what he was saying, but when he was the only adult around...it was definitely awkward.  

Either way, none of them had any reason to like like her.  Duckburg was _still_ cleaning up the mess Aunt Magica had made.  She’d put Webby and the boys and Mr. McDuck’s Money Bin in danger more than once, and even though she wasn’t trying to anymore, sometimes she _still_ managed to.  She cost money to feed and clothe and house, and even though Mr. McDuck had plenty of it, he certainly didn’t like to spend it.  

And on top of all of that, Aunt Magica was still out there, somewhere, regaining her strength and planning a second revenge.  Any day, now, Magica would figure out Lena was still alive and come after her to punish her for for all the ways she had failed her, putting the whole Duck/McDuck/Vanderquack/Beakley family in danger.  And it would be all Lena’s fault.

Lena gulped, trying to swallow down some of the guilt.  That was all ridiculous, right? If Mrs. Beakley didn’t want her there, she wouldn’t let her hang out with Webby.  If the triplets didn’t want her there...well, there wasn’t a whole lot they could do, but they’d probably go out of their way to treat her like garbage.  If Donald didn’t want her there...hm. Well, Lena supposed it didn’t really matter if he wanted her there or not. It wasn’t like he had much authority around the Manor (except where the triplets were concerned), especially since he pretty much lived in the houseboat back in the swimming pool.

And if Mr. McDuck didn’t want her there, if he thought she was _truly_ a threat to his family’s safety, he’d have kicked her out onto the streets.

Right?


End file.
